KEN
“We’re going to talk now.”
She’s back from the Head and she’s tired. I can see it in her posture and in the dark circles under her eyes, and in the way she slumped down onto the mattress as soon as she got back here.
I was waiting for her, of course. I’m not done with her yet, not by a long way.
She shifts uncomfortably on the bed, looking guilty and sore. She’s probably both. I really went in on her with that cane. Not that she didn’t deserve it, but still. Intimate punishment of that nature deserves some kind of after care. In this situation, my ability to look after her is severely limited. I’ll do what I can.
This process hasn’t involved a lot of talking so far, and that’s part of the problem. She’s good with language, and I’m concerned if I engage her in a lot of talking, it will just take longer to train her because she’ll talk me in circles. But after what she just did, some kind of conversation is absolutely in order.
“You stole a car.”
“I needed one.”
“Tom told me what you tried to do to Stephanie. Before I came home. Back at the house. With the lighter.”
“Okay.”
She looks at me under her lashes. She’s still. Quiet. Holding it all in. Keeping her secrets locked as far away from me as possible. Dealing with Mary is like standing outside a high security vault. There are doors within doors within doors.
The only time I get to see her, the real her, is when she breaks down - and that hardly ever happens. Certainly hasn’t since I bought her here. And I understand why. She’s been taught to resist. If she can do one thing, it’s lock the rest of the world out.
But I want in. I need in. And we don’t have forever.
“Is there a point?” She looks at me and asks the question flatly.
“The point is, you do criminal things, Mary.”
The corner of her lip flickers. “So?”
“So, most people feel guilty when they do things like that.”
She looks at me blankly, and even though I know what I’m saying isn’t reaching her, I don’t know any other way to say it. I push through, hating that I have to rely on words. I’m not a man who speaks. I’m a man who does.
“And most people who were in your situation wouldn’t run away from a place like this. Somewhere secure. Where certain foreign intelligences can’t hurt them. Where they have a future.”
“Most people aren’t me,” she shrugs.
“They’re not,” I agree. I want to know her. I have to know her. But I’ll be fucked if I know the way in.
“What do you want, Ken?”
The directness of the question catches me off guard. She’s looking me dead in the eye, and there’s an intensity to her expression which makes me, a hardened soldier, suddenly feel a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. I’ve seen that look before. It’s the look you see in the eyes of men who have done too much.
“I want you,” I say, crouching down in front of her and taking her by the hand.
“You own me. I’m your material. You have me.”
“I mean, I want what’s in here.” I press my hand to the space between her breasts, where her heart beats.
“You want in,” she says softly. “You’re looking for something more. But there’s nothing inside me. There’s nothing left. They took it. I’m hollow now.”
There’s an edge to her voice I haven’t heard before. She’s not sad. She’s not angry. She’s… vacant.
“I don’t believe that.”
“You’re looking for something you can’t find. Maybe that’s because it doesn’t exist.”
“It exists, Mary. You’re still here. With me.”
“If you say so.”
She turns her face away from mine, breaks eye contact. Breaks me. I’ve wanted nothing more than to save this girl since the moment her profile came across my desk, but now I’m wondering if she is right. Mary might have been lost before I found her. Maybe I didn’t save her. Maybe I was too late. Maybe the woman lying in that bed was already gone.
There’s definitely evidence to that effect. She has no impulse control. She does whatever makes the most sense to her in any given moment. She’s not stupid, but she has no interest in the long term, because in her world, there is no long term. There is only the now.
If I’m right about that, she might always need me watching her, making sure she’s under some form of effective control, because she’s obviously not interested in, or maybe even capable of, controlling herself.
And then I feel something. Her fingers curl around mine. She’s holding on to me. She can’t look at me. She can’t bear to show me who she really is, but there’s definitely some part of her that’s still here. Still wanting. Still needing. Still loving.
I have felt this woman wrapped around me, I have seen her soul when I look into her eyes. I have touched what I need to touch.
I take a deep breath and remind myself that the woman sitting in front of me right now is one who has had to face hell recently. When those agents walked in, a part of her walked out, took refuge at the back of her brain and left me with the faction of her which is about survival first.
“We have something,” I remind her, my hand still between the soft swells of her breasts. “We’ve been together. Really together.”
“It was all an act,” she says, her voice husky. “You wanted to fuck me, so I fucked you. I don’t know what love is, Ken. You should get out of here. Before I take you down with me.”
An act? She’s one of the most blunt people I’ve ever known.
“You’re no actress, Mary.”
“Bullshit,” she laughs, cold. “All I do is act. I spend my life watching others. Then I do what they do. I was taught to emulate. I could be anything. Your little fuck toy, their assassin. Whatever. There’s nothing inside me. It was taken a long time ago.
“Mary…”
She looks back at me. She can only see me when she’s angry.
“I was raised to be a spy. I was born to lie. There’s nothing…” she takes a halting breath. “People learn who they are when they’re young. I learned who everyone else was. I never met me.”
That I can believe. Sleeper agents live lies. Their lives are never their own. Everything they do is a cover for something else. So maybe she doesn’t know what it’s like to be authentically her. But I do think she knows who she is and what she wants.
I slide my hand down from her breasts to between her thighs. She draws a breath in, and the skin on her cheeks flushes red.
“You feel me here, Mary?”
She nods quickly, sucking her lower lip between her teeth. I squeeze lightly, knowing that it’s going to hurt a little. My cane whipped her cunt well and truly. She lets out a little whimper and begins to squirm.
“Stay still,” I admonish her sharply. She does as she’s told, her eyes locked on mine. There she is. She’s always present when we make love. Arousal brings her back from oblivion.
The thin clothing doesn’t offer her pussy much protection. I begin stroking my finger up and down the length of her slit, just the pad of it. Maybe I’ve been wrong to avoid sexual contact in her training. I thought it would be unprofessional and a distraction, but now I’m seeing that it focuses her like nothing else.
I can feel her lips parting beneath the fabric of her leggings, and I draw the pad of my finger up to where the greedy bud of her clit is waiting, erect. She lets out a soft little moan as my fingertip works in a circle around it.
“Keep looking at me, Mary,” I murmur softly.
Her eyes had drifted down to my hand between her thighs. At my command, she looks back up at me, meets my gaze.
“Good girl.”